Category Archives: War On Drugs

Chicago Sun-Times

Failed war on drugs won't end because there's money to be made Chicago Sun-Times What a pleasant surprise to read columnist John Stossel disavowing Richard Nixon's (unwinnable) War On Drugs. (Sessions' renewed drug war cruel, stupid, May 18). For numerous valid reasons that he cited, he declaims Attorney General Jeff Sessions' ...

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Failed war on drugs won't end because there's money to be made - Chicago Sun-Times

UPDATED: Sun., May 21, 2017, 7:54 a.m.

DAYTON, Wash. Nearly every lifelong resident has at least one story about the towns old asparagus cannery.

Ginny Butler, past president of the Dayton Historic Depot, remembers her mother and three friends took a job processing asparagus one summer to earn some extra spending money.

They each wanted something for their house and their husbands didnt want to buy it, Butler said, laughing. Two of the women quit right away, but Butlers mother stuck it out, working grueling shifts while caring for her children.

By the end of the season, she was able to buy a decorative piece to hang over the family fireplace.

For decades, the plant defined life in Dayton. Each summer an influx of about 1,000 migrant workers would join the towns other 2,000 permanent residents. Hundreds more workers would tend the nearby fields.

Trade deals just about spoiled Washingtons asparagus industry. Farmers quit the crop. Canneries closed. Then, slowly, farmers used technology and grit to create a second chance. | READ MORE

And then it came to an abrupt stop. In 2005, the company moved much of its business to Peru, taking Washingtons entire asparagus canning industry with it. Farmers plowed under fields. Two other canneries closed.

It totally wiped us out. Ive never seen such a huge, significant industry collapse, said Alan Schreiber, executive director of the Washington Asparagus Commission.

The culprit? Cocaine.

A rare undated historical photo of the asparagus packing production line the inside the Green Giant plant. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)

The Green Giant cannery, as it would come to be called, opened in 1934 after a 45-day construction blitz, according to records from the Dayton Historic Depot. Workers processed peas from surrounding fields at first, then added asparagus in 1939. The company soon created a seed research department with a greenhouse to work on improving pea seeds, and set up a labor camp in 1942 to house Mexican-American workers from Texas.

The Minnesota Valley Canning Co. merged with Blue Mountain Canneries, Inc., the plants original owner, in 1947. By 1950, the company was called Green Giant.

In the early years, they packed asparagus grown in the Dayton area.

The crop, which is perennial, can grow for 15 years after a single planting, though shorter periods are more typical. Once its done, farmers plow it up and plant something else.

Duane Dunlap, who started working as an agriculture personnel supervisor in 1966, said Green Giant would lease the fields from farmers for 20 years. When one cycle of asparagus was over, theyd move on to new land. By the 1970s, asparagus was migrating west, toward the Columbia Basin.

Once the crop quit producing enough to be economical, you had to plow it up, he said. Pretty soon we had no asparagus here.

Dunlaps job was to recruit migrant workers. In the early years, they were mostly single men, but by about 1972, he said, the plant started recruiting families.

Children sometimes worked in the fields with their parents before the company stopped that practice, requiring kids to go to school. Women often worked in the Dayton plant receiving asparagus from all over the region.

More than 40 years later, Dunlap can still recite the towns where the company kept workers housed: Starbuck, Tucannon, Grandview, Khalotus. Many cutters lived in Dayton and were bused out before sunrise to reach the fields, working until midday. The barracks in Dayton, recently donated to the county, sit on Green Giant Camp Road.

It just mushroomed. We had asparagus fields all over the Columbia Basin, he said.

Maurecio Ramos started working in the asparagus fields around Dayton in 1975. He moved his family to Dayton after a few years in the fields, and eventually began doing irrigation work for the company. He left Green Giant in the early 1990s to take a job at City Lumber, a hardware store where he works today in downtown Dayton. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)

Mauricio Ramos started working in the asparagus fields around Dayton in 1975. His uncle began working around Dayton in 1942, when Texas migrant workers were bused up in the back of covered 10-wheeler trucks. By the time Ramos came from Eagle Pass, Texas, the workers traveled in buses with bathrooms.

Workers in the barracks woke at 4:30 a.m. and had to be ready to go to the fields by 5 a.m., Ramos said. Crews were driven to fields, about 20 miles outside of Dayton.

A 1983 filing with the U.S. Department of Labor calls for 150 plant workers, paid $4.26 per hour, or about $10.50 in todays dollars. Cutters made at least the federal minimum wage of $3.35 an hour, but earned $11.75 per hundredweight of asparagus harvested.

If you moved fast, it was good pay, Ramos said.

As Washingtons asparagus fields moved toward the Tri-Cities, cocaine gripped American cities. Powdered cocaine was the king of drugs on Wall Street in the 1980s. Crack cocaine laid waste to the inner cities.

In a 1986 Gallup poll, 42 percent of Americans said crack and other forms of cocaine were the countrys most serious drug problem, besting alcohol by eight percentage points.

This was the golden age of the War on Drugs, and officials in the other Washington came up with what they thought was a good solution: go after the source. So the United States signed the Andean Trade Preference Act, which went into effect in 1991. It gave trade preference via duty-free imports and grants to Andean countries that trafficked cocaine into the U.S.

The goal was to incentivize farmers to grow crops other than coca. The U.S. Agency for International Development built irrigation infrastructure and other projects in Peru. Farmers started planting asparagus.

Asparagus crowns take a few years to mature, and farmers needed time to get the crop right. The Washington market didnt start feeling the effects until about 2002, Schreiber said.

Asparagus is not a hard crop to grow if you know how to grow it, he said. Once Peru developed that knowledge, Washingtons canneries didnt have long.

The Seneca seed processing plant it Dayton, Wash., employees about 50 locals now. When it was a asparagus processing plant, a local workforce of about 50 people swelled to more than 1,000 in the summer, as migrant workers, mostly from Texas, worked hunched over in summer heat to harvest the green spears and can them. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)

Seneca Foods was the last in a string of Dayton plant owners who canned asparagus for Green Giant, which was then owned by General Mills. General Mills made the decision to move operations to Peru in 2005, citing Washingtons high minimum wage and the lower cost of doing business in South America.

They gutted the plant of all those machines and sent them to Peru, Dunlap said.

Daytons plant was the last of three Washington asparagus canneries to close. In 2003, a Del Monte plant in Toppenish and another Seneca plant in Walla Walla stopped processing asparagus.

Ramos moved his family to Dayton after a few years in the fields, and eventually began doing irrigation work for the company. He left Green Giant in the early 1990s to take a job at City Lumber, a hardware store in downtown Dayton. His wife spent about a decade in the plant, earning better wages than she could have gotten in Texas.

By the time he left Green Giant, Ramos said, rumors about the cannerys closure were always floating around. The asparagus fields had already moved out of Dayton further west.

That year when they closed it, they didnt say anything. They just did it, he said.

Jennie Dickinson, now the Port of Columbia manager, was the director of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce at the time of the closure. She said Seneca had been talking about Washingtons minimum wage for a long time before the closure, saying they couldnt raise prices to make up the increased costs.

You can only get so much for a can of asparagus, she said.

Duane Dunlap, 79, stands at the now closed Green Giant housing facility in Dayton, Wash., were he managed migrant farm workers until he retired in 2002. They gutted the plant of all those machines and sent them to Peru, said Duane Dunlap, the plants former personnel manager. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)

Cocaine still comes to the U.S. from Peru, though the amount of coca growing in the Andean highlands has fallen since the 1990s. Whether Peruvian asparagus production has helped depends on whom you ask.

The Peruvian government and White House drug policy office have both defended the trade preference, saying many asparagus farmers came from coca-producing regions.

Schreiber doesnt buy it. Coca is usually grown in the Andean highlands, while asparagus does best at sea level. A 2015 map by the Peruvian government showing hot spots for coca cultivation has almost no overlap with asparagus growing areas.

Theyre the No. 1 exporter of coca and the No. 1 exporter of asparagus, Schreiber said.

That may not be strictly true Colombian coca production surged in 2015, putting it ahead of Peru but Peru has historically been and continues to be a major coca supplier.

USAID sent a little over $384 million in foreign aid to Peru in 2015, the last year for which complete data was available. About a third of that was spent on the Andean Counter Drug Program, and more on other law enforcement related to narcotics. Perus agriculture sector got $24 million.

The amount of coca grown in Peru has fallen nearly 70 percent since 1992, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In 1992, farmers planted 129,100 hectares. By 2015, that was down to 40,300 hectares. A hectare is the equivalent of approximately 2 1/2 acres.

But its debatable whether that fall is because of asparagus. The largest reductions in acreage, according to the UN data, occurred in the mid- and late 1990s, before asparagus production took off. The Peruvian government also eradicated tens of thousands of hectares in the 2010s.

A larger-than-life Jolly Green Giant still sits on the hillside above Dayton, Wash., though the plant that canned the companys asparagus left town for Peru in 2005. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)

Whether it helped stop cocaine trafficking or not, Dayton residents know the plant isnt coming back.

The white brick outline of a larger-than-life Jolly Green Giant still sits on a hillside above town, well-maintained now after some years in disrepair.

My husband says, Take it down, theyre not here anymore. I say, Were still the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant, Dickinson said.

The cannery was the largest private employer in Dayton at the time of its closure. But, Dickinson said, most of the jobs lost were people near retirement age. Seneca kept 10 workers on to work processing seeds, a business still going strong in the old Green Giant location.

Daytons culture during harvest and packing season changed right away. Dayton children used to look forward to seeing their friends, the children of migrant workers, in class each spring.

It was kind of a domino effect, said Brad McMasters, who was a third-grade student teacher when the plant closed, and now does economic development work for the Port. The laundromat closed, and a few bars shut down.

The workers often gathered in public spaces, sitting on downtown benches and socializing. Hearing Spanish on the street was common. Butler, the Dayton Historic Depot board member, said that sense of community was missing after the closure.

I just felt like the fabric of Dayton was thinner, Butler said. Some families, like Ramos, stayed in the area, but many left for the Tri-Cites or other asparagus areas.

The economic impact of the closure would have hit harder, but wind power was booming just as Seneca moved asparagus to Peru. PacifiCorp began building the Marengo Wind Farm the same year, bringing in new construction jobs and some permanent jobs maintaining the turbines. A second farm, Hopkins Ridge, went in the following year, and a third came soon after.

Without those, I cant even imagine what would have happened to us, Dickinson said.

Columnist Paul Turner takes a look the asparagus question thats often pondered but rarely brought up: Why does it make your pee smell anyway, and why can some of us smell it and others cant? | READ MORE

Seneca has been expanding its seed processing operations. Plant manager Chris Shires said it employs about 50 people, half of whom are full time and half of whom work about 10 months a year. In the past six months, theyve tripled their volume and now process 30 million pounds of pea, garbanzo and wheat seeds per year for three companies.

Because of that expansion, theyre now using the full space once occupied by the asparagus cannery.

Washingtons asparagus canning industry wont come back, something Schreiber said hes still bitter about. Hes worked to reinvent Washington asparagus as a fresh crop, but said hundreds of people lost money when the plants shut down: farmers who plowed under fields, businesses who sold groceries and gas to migrant workers, families that relied on the income from plant workers.

Its been a rough, gut-wrenching era, he said.

Dunlap retired from Seneca in 2002 and has since been active in the Blue Mountain Heritage Society, which recently restored a one-room schoolhouse from the countys early days and moved it into downtown Dayton. He sits on the board and did much of the painting to bring the old classroom back to life.

For Dickinson, the loss of lifelong company workers like Dunlap will be the true loss to Dayton. Wind farms provide good jobs, but the young people who take them often move up in the energy company and leave for a bigger city. Asparagus gave Dayton a supply of company men who retired, stayed in town and can give back now with community service.

But between tax revenue from wind farms, a budding local food movement and the towns proximity to a small ski area, hiking and agrotourism, Dayton isnt in danger of becoming a ghost town.

Were just not going to dry up and blow away like a lot of farm towns, Dickinson said.

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Dayton lost its asparagus business to the 'War on Drugs' but ... - The Spokesman-Review

Lima Stadium Park dedicated By Sam Shriver Multimedia Video Journalist 2017-05-21T21:40:46Z

A new Lima park is open to the public. Lima Stadium Park has been an effort of cooperation...one between the City of Lima, Lima City Schools, several private property owners and the AR-Hale Foundation.

The Ohio Investigative Unit is looking into possible allegations of misconduct and misuse of law enforcement equipment at the Putnam County Sheriff's Office.

Tonight, the long anticipated Rally in the Square kicked off in the heart of downtown Lima, but with somechanges.

Hello! My name is Cynthia Hill.

Before I came to WLIO-TV, I was an anchor/reporter for KXMB-TV in Bismarck, North Dakota.

I also worked as a news presenter/producer at AccuWeather in State College, PA.

This years St. Rose Festival was a bit different than previous years. Because of construction of a new building on the St. Rose grounds, the festival was pared down to fit in the available space. There was still plenty to eat and there was live music but no amusement rides. A miniature golf course was set up outside and many kids games were held inside. All of the proceeds go back into the parishs general fund.

Faurot Park was the place to be for dogs - and one goat - for the Bark in the Parkevent, put on by ALotta Love Pet Rescue.

One of the important first steps to start building a Habitat for Humanity home is bringing the community together for the ground blessingceremony - and that's exactly what the Putnam County Habitat for Humanity did in Ottawa.

A Delphos business suffered structural damage, Tuesday morning.

Senior athletes participate in a swim meet to prepare for a national competition this summer.

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Funding sought to protect officers in war on drugs - Your News Now

The county prosecutor joined 30 of his peers in signing a letter opposing the Attorney Generals recent order.

In a short memo delivered earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed his predecessors steps away from mass incarceration by ordering federal prosecutors to charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense. While this order applies to all federal prosecutions, the order will particularly affect drug crime cases, which in combination with mandatory minimum sentences have heavily contributed to Americas high level of incarceration. Where AGs in the Obama administration had begun a tepid retreat from the War on Drugs, using prosecutorial discretion to sometimes reduce charges against some drug offenders, Sessions memo doubled-down on it.

In response, thirty current and former state and local prosecutors have signed an open letter opposing Sessions memo, according to The Washington Post. (Sessions only has authority over federal prosecutors, not any of the letters signatories.) Among them was King County prosecutor Dan Satterberg. In an interview last week, he told us that with regard to the War on DrugsI think everyone can admit that that was the wrong response and said hes ready to use his office to defend Seattle and King Countys planned pilot safe drug sites, which will epitomize the kind of drug user intolerance Sessions opposes.

The open letter Satterberg co-signed reads in part, There is no empirical evidence to suggest that increases in sentences, particularly for low-level offenses, decrease the crime rateAlthough there are no certain benefits to the newly announced policy, there are definitive and significant costs, including dollars to pay for prisons and human lives with which to fill them. In essence, the Attorney General has reinvigorated the failed war on drugs, reads the letter.

We will continue in our own jurisdictions to undertake innovative approaches that promote public safety and fairness, and that ensure that law enforcements finite resources are directed to the arrest and prosecution of the most serious offenders. It is through these priorities that prosecutors can best advance public safety and fortify trust in the legitimacy of our crimial justice system.

cjaywork@seattleweekly.com

This post has been updated.

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Dan Satterberg Takes a Stand Against Jeff Sessions' War on Drugs - Seattle Weekly

Special to the Times Record News 6:19 p.m. CT May 19, 2017

FILE - In this March 6, 2017 file photo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions waits to make a statement at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office in Washington. Sessions is seeking the resignations of 46 United States attorneys who were appointed during the prior presidential administration, the Justice Department said Friday, March 10, 2017.(Photo: Susan Walsh, AP)

Instead of pressing forward on sensible drug policy that places a premium on addiction treatment and lighter sentencing rules involving low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is looking to take the nation two steps back to the days of failed policy under the War on Drugs. In effect, Sessions announcement last week on toughening rules for prosecutors considering drug crimes will serve only to return the nation to that dismal, costly trend of mass incarceration, primarily of young black men.

Sessions call for change in prosecuting guidelines, which would include a more robust approach to mandatory minimum sentences, comes at a time when Democrats and Republicans together have proposed alternative sentencing for low-level drug offenders. Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, has embraced a greater emphasis on treatment, and has been a long-term supporter of drug courts.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of the authors of bipartisan legislation that would seek more lenient sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, wrote an op-ed for CNN this week in which he reiterated his support for Obama-era policies put in place by former Attorney General Eric Holder. Among those were guidelines issued to U.S. attorneys that they refrain from seeking longer sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

And make no mistake, wrote Paul, the lives of many drug offenders are ruined the day they receive that long sentence the attorney general wants them to have.

Another longtime believer in moving away from strict sentencing guidelines for low-level drug crimes is Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat who served nearly two terms as mayor of Newark and saw firsthand the devastation mandatory sentencing can have on young black men and their families. Resetting this policy back to the old lock em up mentality last encouraged under the leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft in the early 2000s would be felt heavily on the streets of Paterson, Newark and Camden.

Piling on mandatory minimum sentences and three strikes, youre out laws on nonviolent offenders did little to stop the illegal drug trade in recent decades, Booker said after reading Sessions rules changes. Instead, it decimated entire communities, most often poor communities and communities of color; resulted in an uneven application of the law; and undermined public trust in the justice system.

As both Paul and Booker point out, mandatory sentencing laws handcuff prosecutors and judges as they approach individual cases, and often send young people to prison for long stretches of time for relatively minor offenses. These arrests, convictions and sentences disproportionately affect African-Americans and their families, and can serve to set the course of their entire lives.

Equal justice advocates are hopeful the energy created by the Sessions announcement will spur members of Congress to move aggressively to address criminal justice reform, including the rollback of mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. Christie, who has long been on the common-sense side of addiction treatment and has raised the profile of the use of drug courts, could be an important voice on this issue. We encourage him to wholeheartedly join the pushback against this failed tough love approach to drug criminalization the attorney general is pursuing.

This editorial appeared in The Record in Hackensack, New Jersey.

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Wrong direction in 'War on Drugs' - Times Record News - Times Record News

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZLEZ: I want to ask Michelle Alexander, there wasthere appeared to be some hope in the last few years that the country was finally beginning to turn away from mass incarceration, especially when it came to drugs. And now were seeing, under the new Trump administrationwe heard what some of the stuff that attorneythe new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, says. Your reaction to where the country appeared to be heading and where nowthe turn that its now taking?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Well, I think its clear by the rhetoric coming out of the Justice Department today that they are committed to reviving a warlike mentality towards poor people and people of color. And I think we need to respond forcefully, with as much courage and compassion as we can muster in these times.

You know, a few decades ago, politicians were banging the podium, calling for "law and order" and "get tough," and declaring war. And our, you know, television sets were filled with images of crack mothers, crack babies. And a literal war was unleashed on communities, war that devastated the lives of people like Susan and families and communities of color nationwide.

Well, today, the enemy has been defined as those brown-skinned immigrants sneaking across the border. And, you know, Donald Trump has banged the podium, you know, saying, "We must get rid of them."

JUAN GONZLEZ: Bringing drugs, because

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Yes, claiming theyre getting

JUAN GONZLEZ: He even said it yesterday with Colombia, right?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Yes, claiming theyre bringing drugs and that theyre murderers, and urging our nation to get rid of them all. You know, that war that was declared on drugs decades ago gave birth to a private prison system, gave birth to the system of mass incarceration. And if we had risen to the challenge of the war on drugs the way that we could have and should have, the system of mass deportation would not exist today. The private detention centers that are locking up immigrants today wouldnt even exist but for the drug war that was waged, with little resistance, for decades in this country and that birthed a prison system, you know, a penal system, unlike anything this world had ever seen before.

So I hope that we will learn the lessons that the drug war has to teach us, and rise to the challenge this moment in history presents, and build a truly transformational, revolutionary movement that will not only dismantle the system of mass incarceration and mass deportation, but will lead us to a new way of life, a new way of caring for one another and for our communities, and reimagine what justice can and should be in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: But, Michelle, thats not the direction, of course, of the Trump administrationJeff Sessions, the attorney general of the United States, just announcing an escalation on the war on drugs, going after drug offenders, people who are addicted. Can you talk about the significance of what this means, pushing for mandatory minimums when theres been this consensus now, in many ways across the political spectrum, of the right, from the Koch brothers to Newt Gingrich, to progressives who have been pushing for reform for a long time? What does this mean? What effect will it have?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Well, at the federal level, it will have significant effect for those who are arrested and charged with federal crimes, particularly drug crimes, and who will be facing years, perhaps decades, longer than they might otherwise have, you know, before Sessions kind of overturned Obamas memo directing a slightly more compassionate approach.

But theres tremendous movement in states and in communities around the country, in places like California and Ohio. I can go down the list of states and communities that are calling for legalization of marijuana, that are moving to declassify drug offenses from felonies to simple misdemeanors. There is momentum that will not be turned back overnight.

And thats why I think its important for us not only to see the necessity of continuing to build momentum to end the drug war, but to understand that the racial politics that gave birth to this drug war are the same racial politics that have given birth to the war on immigrants. And its not simply a matter of building a movement to reform drug policy. Its about building a movement that will break the history and cycle of these racially punitive politics that birth systems of racial and social control in whatever form.

And so, Im hoping that in the months and years to come, that well see more coordination, more unity between the movements to end mass incarceration and the movements to end mass deportation, and come to see its the same struggle to define who is worthy, who has dignity and value, and who is disposable. And ultimately, we are trying to birth a new America in which each and every one of us, no matter who we are, where we came from or what we may have done, is viewed as fully human, with dignity and value and, you know, deserving of inclusion in our nation, despite the efforts to distract and to divide and to elicit from us our most punitive impulses.

JUAN GONZLEZ: Id like to ask Susanwe only have about 30 seconds, but is there any hope of your expanding your successful New Way of Life to other cities across the country?

SUSAN BURTON: The next stage is to actually identify areas in the country and develop a network of the model in which A New Way of Life has developed that successfully brings people back into the community. Theres been a lot of interest, and Im going to respond to that interest, because all over America we have found that women have been taken out of their homes, men have been sent away, and they need to be able to come back in successfully.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan Burton and Michelle Alexander, we thank you so much for being with us. Susans new book is called Becoming Ms. Burton.

That does it for the show. Ill be in New Mexico tonight in Santa Fe, tomorrow in Tempe, Arizona and in Houston.

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Michelle Alexander: We Must Respond Forcefully & Challenge Jeff ... - Democracy Now!

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: WIRED

Amid all the chaos and confusion of the Trump administration, one certainty abides: Attorney General Jeff Sessions does not like pot.

The former Alabama senator once joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was ok until he found out they smoked weed. During a 2016 Senate hearing, he called marijuana a dangerous drug. He also didnt shy away from Reefer Madness-era moralizing: Good people, he said, dont smoke marijuana.

Federal law shares Sessions sentiment. The US still bans marijuana outright, placing it in the same category as heroin and cocaine. But these days, opposing pot is bad politics. During the November election, marijuana legalization polled better than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. In Colorado, which has legalized both medicinal and recreational marijuana, one report found the industry added $2.4 billion and 18,000 jobs to the local economy in 2015. Even the staunchly conservative Florida governor Rick Scott has approved a measure legalizing medical marijuana for the terminally ill. Sending federal agents to raid marijuana dispensaries in the 29 states that have legalized weed in one way or another only seems likely to alienate voters.

Does the GOP really want to piss off the senior citizens of Florida? says Micah Tapman, who runs the Colorado-based cannabis startup incubator Canopy.

Tapman isnt betting on it. What worries cannabis entrepreneurs like him most isnt some blatant crackdown on dispensaries, but a more surreptitious war on drugs, in which government overseers like the Department of Labor or the Internal Revenue Service catch cannabis companies slipping up on the more mundane details of complying with laws around safety, environmental standards, and taxes. In other words, to stop pot, the Trump administration may find the answer in what it ostensibly despises most: government regulation.

Which, ironically enough, presents its own business opportunity. Today, there are businesses like Front Range Biosciences that test the quality of different growers cannabis. Adistry, meanwhile, ensures cannabis companies are compliant with advertising restrictions. Other startups help businesses track the product through the supply chain, manage wholesale orders, and yes, even handle payrollall so marijuana companies can focus on selling a product that could still technically land their proprietors in federal prison.

Complying with local and state regulations is already a migraine-inducing experience for most any small business, much less one trafficking in a federally banned substance. Laws limit where and how marijuana sellers can advertise. They require dispensaries to track and trace all cannabis products from seed to sale. Even something as simple as paying employees poses challenges for these businesses, since big banks, still bound by federal law, cant work with payroll providers that service cannabis companies. If the federal government decides to pile on with a new regulatory war on drugs, marijuana entrepreneurs may need help. And so startups are springing up to provide it.

There are a lot of ways they can stick their fingers in the industry without having the DEA go after the industry, says Keegan Peterson, CEO of Wurk, a payroll and compliance firm that works with legal marijuana companies. Its created a lot of work for us.

Sessions has so far exercised caution as he tiptoes into the pot policy arena. He appears poised to keep in place the 2013 Cole memorandum, guidelines laid out by the Obama-era Justice Department that instructed federal prosecutors and law enforcement to de-prioritize cases against marijuana businesses that were following state law. Still, its clear Sessions sees marijuana as a scourge. Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life, he said during a speech in March.

For people like Peterson, Sessions anti-pot animus suggests that while he may not seek to upend the industry entirely, he plans to keep a close eye on it. They have made clear that theyre going to make sure the businesses that are operating are following the law, Peterson says. And that likelihood has been a boon for the burgeoning cannabis compliance industry.

All of these things say to a Department of Justice thats unfriendly, Look, we understand you disagree, but were being responsible,' says Tapman. Were going 60 in a 55.

For would-be pot entrepreneurs, its a different world than the one Steve DeAngelo stepped into when he opened Harborside Health, one of Californias first dispensaries, in 2006. Back then, DeAngelo had to build his own laboratory to monitor the plants quality and develop software that could follow it through the supply chain. Now, he says, Theres been a sea change when you look at the kind of support resources available to a legal cannabis business today.

And yet, industry leaders know that Sessions now holds the power to overturn that progress. Just last week, they saw how impermanent the countrys current drug enforcement rules are when Sessions directed federal prosecutors to pursue the most serious, readily provable offense in their cases. In doing so, Sessions effectively reversed the Obama-era drift toward doing away with mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders.

It brings to mind the departments ability to make quick decisions that affect a very large percentage of people, Peterson says. Thats the organization that controls the future of the cannabis industry.

That future is still very much in flux. For now, the most the industry can do to prepare for such uncertainty is to keep its books in order.

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The Pot Startups Prepping for Jeff Sessions' New War on Drugs - WIRED

By Hub staff report

The criminalization of drug usethe so-called war on drugshas had negative impacts on the prevention and treatment of HIV, according to a systematic review of research on the topic.

A team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of British Columbia analyzed 106 studies published between 2006 and 2014, sharing their findings this week in journal Lancet HIV.

Stefan Baral

Johns Hopkins epidemiologist

Of the studies the team reviewed, 80 percent suggest that drug criminalization has a negative effect on HIV prevention and treatment among people who inject drugs. Across the world, the injection of drugs continues to be a key driver in the HIV epidemic, with about 13 percent of these drug users estimated to be living with the virus.

The researchers found that stiff penalties for possession of illegal drugs have failed to reduce drug use, while putting thousands of people in jail who might be better served by treatment.

"The evidence that criminalization helps is weak at best, and the vast majority of studies show that criminalization hurts when it comes to health, economics, and society-at-large," says one of the study's leaders, Stefan Baral, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School.

Baral notes that the study's publication comes on the heels of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' directives for federal authorities to start seeking the toughest penalties possible for drug violations, even for less serious offenses. In the meantime, the United States also faces an unprecedented opioid crisis.

The researchers suggest the need for alternative policies for limiting the harms of drug use, including infectious disease, overdose, and unemployment due to drug arrests.

According to the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, more than 1.5 million drug-related arrests are made every year in the U.S., the overwhelming majority for possession only, yet levels of drug use remain high. Previous research estimates that 56 to 90 percent of people who inject drugs will be incarcerated at some point in their lives.

Baral notes that fear of arrest or incarceration prevents many from seeking help for addiction; ideally, he suggests, people charged with drug offenses should be connected with treatment.

He also suggests that U.S. policies should allow for programs like needle exchanges and possibly safe consumption facilities to minimize infections and fatal overdoses. The 2015 HIV epidemic in Indiana, for example, was caused in part by the sharing of dirty needles among heroin users.

"We must understand that punitive laws have neither decreased the supply or the use of drugs and have caused adverse health outcomes," Baral says. "The current approach is not working."

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War on drugs hurts HIV prevention and treatment, research review suggests - The Hub at Johns Hopkins

WASHINGTON Attorney General Jeff Sessions former colleagues in the Senate are pushing back on his order to federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties possible for defendants, including mandatory minimum sentences, and introducing legislation to give federal judges more sentencing discretion.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who co-sponsored the legislation, said that Sessions new policy will accentuate the existing injustice in the criminal justice system.

Mandatory minimum sentences disproportionately affect minorities and low-income communities, while doing little to keep us safe and turning mistakes into tragedies, said Paul. As this legislation demonstrates, Congress can come together in a bipartisan fashion to change these laws.

Last week, in a two-page memo to federal prosecutors across the country, Sessions overturned former attorney general Eric Holders sweeping criminal charging policy that instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with offenses that trigger long mandatory minimum sentences. In its place, Sessions told his more than 5,000 assistant U.S. attorneys to charge defendants with the most serious crimes, carrying the toughest penalties.

After Sessions released his new policy, it drew bipartisan criticism the policy would mark a return to mass incarceration, especially of minorities. It was embraced, however, by the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, whose president said it would restore more tools to do their jobs.

An outgrowth of the failed War on Drugs, mandatory sentencing strips critical public safety resources away from law enforcement strategies that actually make our communities safer, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Leahy and Paul introduced the Justice Safety Valve Act with Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., are introducing a companion bill in the House. The legislation would allow federal judges to tailor sentences on a case-by-case basis. It would also reduce correctional spending, which accounts for nearly a third of Justice Departments budget.

During President Barack Obamas second term, similar sentencing reform legislation was introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

The legislation, which had 37 Senate sponsors, would have reduced mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug crimes.

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Senators resist Sessions' initiative for new war on drugs - Press Herald

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte shakes hands with Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eduardo Ao. PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO

Outgoing military chief Eduardo Ao said Friday he would apply the rule of law in a campaign against drug syndicates when he takes over the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).

Ao made the pledge as President Duterte personally set June 2 for the DILG to be turned over to the 55-year-old Ao who reaches the military retirement age of 56 in October.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said he tried on Thursday to persuade Mr. Duterte to extend Aos tour in the military but the President rejected the idea.

(The President) said No, no, no, no. Lets have the turnover by June 2, Lorenzana quoted Mr. Duterte as saying.

When told of the Presidents remarks at the closing of the Philippine-US Balikatan exercise at Camp Aguinaldo, Ao said he was still awaiting official instructions.

I have not received an official order. I will just have to prepare, he said, conceding that Mr. Duterte might be in a hurry to have him transferred because the DILG is a big agency.

The DILG is big. It has big responsibilities. Because the DILG plays a big role in (Mr. Dutertes) program, he needs a permanent and regular secretary to take over immediately, Ao said.

But the general, who spent most of his military career as an intelligence officer, said he understood the challenges he is facing.

Many ways

I believe I have enough knowledge and information on how to run the team in the DILG. There is already an existing team in the DILG. I will just be joining the team, he said.

He also recognized that one of the problems in the war against drugs was the local and international criticism it had been getting.

Ao said the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency would lead the antidrug campaign with the support of the Philippine National Police.

Well find many ways to defeat the (drug menace) using and following the rule of law, Ao said, adding that the PNP should retool its image.

Its very important that the image of the PNP should be morally high so that we can get the cooperation of the public, he said.

From users to syndicates

Ao said he would also shift the focus from street dealers and users to drug syndicates.

What we will do is really focus on the drug syndicates that supply these drugs to the communities. You really need to go to the source, Ao said.

Its like the insurgency. We have to address the root causes. It is also the same in the war on drugs. We will work together on that. We will make a good holistic approach on the war on drugs, he added.

Asked about the transition at the Armed Forces, Ao said the Board of Generals has yet to submit to the President the names of his possible successor.

We will recommend at least three names and then the President will decide who is the possible successor as the next Chief of Staff, he added.

However, his early retirement should not have a bad effect on the AFPs plans and programs.

Theyre not centered on one personality, he said.

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Rule of law in war on drugsAFP chief - Inquirer.net